Nvidia 185.81 Notebook Drivers now available

Vista 32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista_185.81_beta.html

Vista 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista64_185.81_beta.html

Windows 7 32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_win7_185.81_beta.html

Windows 7 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_win7_x64_185.81_beta.html

Windows XP 32-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winxp_185.81_beta.html

Windows XP 64-bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winxp64_185.81_beta.html

 

Yes, downloading now, will try later. Never messed with the 185 series yet, so I wanna see that ambient occlusion jazz.

 

Downloading too well see what are these drivers worth

 

Installed.
Seems to be as good as 185.66.
CS:S also works with this version (didn't with 185.66)

 

Boosted my 3dmark05 score by ~40 points

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update - boosted my score in 3dmark06 by ~40 points as well

 

By the looks of things this driver is a almost 2/3s the size of the previous one, any ideas where the change came from?

 

What happened? 7 series GPUs again left out.

 

Looks like they are ready for the 2xxm series now.

 

Thanks for posting. I'm still using the 175.97 driver since it's been rock solid for me and I've been too lazy to tinker around with drivers lately. I think I'll give these a try though.

 

I'll try em out tonight

 

Again, this comes right after I already clean-installed my system and put 179.48 on it.
*sigh*
Will be trying them out soon enough.

EDIT: Or not - there's no WHQL certificate (for once, Nvidia's posting beta drivers as such!). And since I do like my Blu-ray playback, I'll be staying on 179.48 on Vista.
Will go 185.81 on Win7 RC when I get my mitts on it.

 

Great, will download this ready to install for when my NP8662 arrives next week!

I will most likely test the stock ones and then compare to these new ones. Will especially take note of GTA IV and SR2 performances before and after this update.

 

Too bad that I have to mod this to install it my Vaio. Nvidia & Sony don't go well together

 

Does this have anything to do with Sony's hybrid graphics?

 

My notebook doesn't have hybrid graphics. But I assume that Sony doesn't want Nvidia to release driver updates for it's notebooks.

 

anybody compared this to the DOX drivers? I've been getting about 100 points more with DOX 185.20 compared to the 185.66 one, so would any of you people recommend this versus the DOX ones?

 

I never bothered to change the driver that I am currently using since I can barely tell the difference between one driver and the other "performance wise".

 

Am I the only one or is this driver not digitally signed?

 

nope, it's normal I guess

 

nope, as in it's not digitally signed? can you be more clear, please.

 

No it isnt digitally signed.

 

thanks, I thought i installed it wrong when I extracted it first instead of just double clicking the downloaded icon.

 

First I wondered - have I entered a "ghost" version of NVidia site with messed up drivers made by lousy hackers lol, because I was sure NVidia always signs digitaly they're drivers, but I double checked and It came clear that there's nothing to worry about

 

Has anyone checked to see whether these resolve the BSOD after sleep issues?

 

Good looking out Coolguy.

I'll try it later.

 

Thrice accursed blue screen bug is still there. On the bright side, the drivers did raise my 3DMark06 score by 50 points to 3927.

 

Nice find! Thanks! Can anyone confirm whether it retains Blu Ray or not?

 

Working really well for me on a 9800M GS.

 

Yeah same working great for me too (9800m GS)

 

im just running vantage first to get a comparison score before i load the drivers but vantage keeps crashing half way through. ive got 9800GT.

 

running well on 9800m gts.

 

Oh joy. Doesn't even work

 

yep well...these are horribly unstable. Gonna keep testing though see how it goes. Does not even let you disable powermizer.

 

My WEI dropped from 5.0 to 4.8 after I installed this driver. The component whose score has dropped is Graphics - Desktop Performance for Windows Aero. The other components' scores remained the same. Is this normal?

 

mine dropped from 4.9 to 4.8

 

Yeah, it is normal. From my experience, only OEM drivers have smooth performances with Aero.

 

Let me see.. I hope I will get some good results. Also can anyone see what are the changes from the past 179xx to 185.81??

 

Please everyone read this post!

3dmark scores have no actual bearing on what your in-game performance is like! If you want to see how a driver is good for GAMES then bench it in a game! I have gained 200+ points in 3dmark from drivers and lost fps in Farcry 2 which was the game I was playing at the time so the new drivers weren't as good as the old ones for me! Please everyone stop saying a driver is better because you have abeter 3dmark score! IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE TO ACTUAL GAMES!

Find your favourite game and bench in the game! Some games that have good benchmarks are: Crysis, Farcry 2, Company Of Heroes, Unreal Tournament 2, Half Life 2 and much more!

 

If you're a benchmarker, sometimes the highest 3dmark score is exactly what you're looking for. I've got better drivers for games...Is this driver faster than 179.48 or not (for 3dmark06)?

 

185 doesn't like my second monitor on hdmi on my hdx 18.
My secondary monitors native resolution is less than my laptop native and it seems to choke on that.

179 defaults low and let's you set up multi-monitor.
185 defaults high and gets stuck in some kind of infinite loop.

 

Mine was at Aero score was 4.7 and stayed 4.7. That said, WEI is not a good benchmark to begin with and the Aero score is the least useful part of it. For example, a long time ago we established that a system with an 8400M GS will beat one with a DDR2 8600M GT by quite a bit precisely because of the Aero score. Of course, there is nothing meaningful an 8400M GS can do that the 8600M GT can't do better so this is extremely misleading.

Basically, just don't pay attention to the WEI.

It makes no difference in my favorite games. The last driver change that was meaningful any of the games that I play was from 167.59 to 179.28 because it got rid of the ridiculously long ALT-TAB time for Mass Effect.

 

WEI stayed on 5 even tho this means nothing.

3dmark06 went up by 130 from 9355 to 9485 and vantage went up by 1056 from p4006 to p5062

me happy

 

Did you not have phsyx installed? The one obvious reason your score would go up 1k points in vantage is physx was/wasn't boosting your cpu score

 

Nice, thanks for the driver link. My benchmark went up 80pts! I think my last driver version was somewhere in the 1.75 area. Been a few months since I upgraded.

 

its installed and enabled.
disabled it and got P4278

 

So, overall, are we getting good performance than the old version or not?

 

Won't budge from 179.48 until I see a WHQL certificate.

 

Just being inquisitive,why do you need the WHQL certificate for? Just personal satisfaction? Or for enabling Blu Ray playback?

 

Blu-ray, basically.
I'm also ever-so-slightly hesitant to put a beta graphics driver on my system, but that's just personal preference.